One of Southeast Asia’s leading contemporary artists is taking over the Singapore Art Museum for a major solo exhibition. Titled Afterimage, this three-month-long showcase centres on Manila-based artist Maria Taniguchi, exploring the ideas of repetition, time and labour through some of her monumental artworks, which include paintings, sculptures and video installations.
At the centre of the exhibition is her ongoing series of untitled “brick” paintings that began nearly two decades ago. These large canvases, some of which are several metres tall, feature thousands of rows of tiny black rectangles meticulously outlined in graphite. More than just abstract artworks, these paintings reflect on the process and hard work that went into each piece.
Other unmissable exhibition highlights include a site-specific iteration of her Runaways sculptures, carved out of Java Plum wood, and four moving-image works that were produced in the last 16 years.
Taniguchi’s works have been presented at various major museums, galleries, and biennales all over the world, including the Biennale of Sydney and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. In 2015, she won the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award for Emerging Asian Artists.
